I first learnt to ride a bicycle (the big kind that I ride to work everyday on even now) when I was seven years old. Back then, I was too short for my feet to reach all the way to the ground when I was sitting on the seat. Which meant that I had a bigger problem even before I learnt to ride the bicycle - I had to figure out a way to get on and off the bicycle.

Luckily, I had a friend with an extra bicycle and he agreed to help me with this. He was my training wheels. He would hold the bicycle steady while I got on and run behind me holding the bicycle until I gained some speed. And then he would let go. As I pedaled on, he would get on his bicycle and follow me. Finally, when I wanted to stop, I'd shout out to him and he would get off his bicycle and run over to me as I slowed down. He would hold the bicycle again as I brought it to a stop and got my feet down.

Eventually, I learnt to jump on and off while starting and stopping and could manage on my own. In the process, I fell down several times until I learnt how not to.

I learnt to ride a bicycle by simply getting on one and doing it.

I learnt to write in the same manner. When Blogger was new, I just got myself a domain and began to write something whenever I felt like it. And eventually, I was writing more regularly and consistently and better. And then I wrote a whole book and published it.

The best way to learn something is to just do it. And aim to get better than the previous time each time you go out and do it.

By doing, we can learn anything. We can learn how to dance, how to cook, how to market things on Facebook, how to optimise our website to show up higher and higher on Google's search results, how to lead a team, how to start a company, anything at all.

This shouldn't lead us into thinking that we can do better than anyone else out there and beat anyone by merely showing up. By showing up and by doing, we will do better than what we were previously capable of doing. So, in order to do better than anyone else, we need to show up more often than anyone else.

But the first step to learning something is to merely show up and do it, to merely begin.